JOGO FUNCIONAL

If you've followed my account for a while you would have noticed my fascination with diagonality, a concept which is at the heart of a lot of my work. For a while I've been sharing clips and commenting on teams putting this concept into practice, occasionally sharing ideas on how to train this as well. The word itself is becoming more used in discourse but, like most terminology, can get misinterpreted or reduced. When Coach of PSG's U18 team, former Italian International and recent ex Juventus coach Thiago Motta once famously said- ''I don't see formations vertically, I see them horizontally. We play a 2-7-2*'' *the goalkeeper acts as part of the midfield 7.  For many years I didn't quite understand what Motta was referring to, that is a pretentious way of articulating something rather simplistic like verticality. What did Motta mean with these comments? Could it be that he was referring to diagonality?  I wanted to write something that speaks to th...

  Lately I've been exploring a topic that has its roots in some of South America's most exciting and flamboyant teams and was wondering if it could be advantageous in the European footballing landscape. After a few discussions on X and after doing research for my River Plate analysis, which you can watch here , I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate some time to write about it and try and explore this in more detail as well as touching on some examples that I've seen in games this week where  it has been used both efficiently and not quite so.  Europe and South America have always took ideas from each other, from the back 4 spreading from Brazil, the total football of Rinus Michels, also in a more radical and more recent example- the 'Europeanisation' of South American football (the Positional vs Functional debate). From more defensive tacticians like Bilardo and Herrera to more ' romantic' coaches such as Menotti and B...

  Racing Santander have had a flying start to the La Liga Hypermotion season, at the time of writing they sit joint top of the table with Levante after an unbeaten start and are considered to be playing some of the best football in the division, if not Spain.  Manager José Alberto is into his 2nd full season at the club, after spells at Mirandes where he replaced Andoni Iraola and Malaga he has created a side that are scratching the heads of many analysts in Spain for their unconventional style. Racing are an enigma of a football team, they don't conform to the globalised principles and guidelines of Positional play and are in fact leading a quiet tactical revolution in Europe which is starting to gather interest.  Their approach is somewhat unconventional, from their opening 5 games (and friendly against Athletic Club) we've seen a variety of behaviours established in their attacking phase. They explore the paradigms of w...